There was no sky.
No ground.
Only mist.
Not soft or gentle, but heavy—like breath from a throat too long strangled. It pulsed with memory, humming in Quinn’s ears like a scream swallowed by time.
He stumbled forward, barefoot, bare-chested, the bite on his wrist still bleeding.
His blood didn’t fall.
It floated.
Curling into symbols he didn’t understand. Not yet.
"Rowan!" he cried, voice echoing into nothing. “Jace!”
The fog didn’t answer.
But the pain did.
A sharp ache, flaring across his chest like a wound being reopened. He looked down—and the mark was burning. The original one. The one Jace had given him five years ago, in the clearing under the moon.
He’d hidden it. Buried it. Hated it.
But it had never left him.
And now, it pulsed with something alive.
Something ancien
